Electronic program guides are known. They originated either with analog cable television technology or digital satellite television technology, and their availability has increased with the advent of digital cable television technology and digital terrestrial broadcast television. In its most basic form, the electronic program guide is superimposed upon a television screen in the form of a grid having rows that correspond to television channels and columns that correspond to 30 minute intervals between the hours and half hours of the day. Using (typically) a remote control, a television viewer can navigate through the electronic program guide to determine what programs are being broadcast at times of interest to the viewer.
In general, an electronic program guide is formed from data embedded in the television signal (meta data). Changes in the programming schedule that are determined far in advance of the effected program's(s') time(s) of broadcast can usually be incorporated into the data included within the television signal so that the electronic program guide does not depict scheduling information that is inconsistent with what is actually being televised at that moment. But if the changes to the schedule concern programs that are to be shown, i.e., have time slots, soon after the program currently being shown, then the known electronic program guide technology cannot quickly and easily update the schedule information displayed to the viewer. Consequently, a situation occurs in which the schedule displayed to the viewer via the electronic program guide generated by the television receiver is inconsistent with what is currently being shown on the television.
An example of this problem will be discussed. In the Fall season, on Sunday afternoons in the United States, it is typical for professional football games to be televised. Some of the games begin at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) while others begin at 4:00 p.m. EST. One of the television signal providers, the Columbia Broadcast System (CBS), also broadcasts a very popular news program, “Sixty Minutes,” beginning at 7:00 p.m. EST. Depending upon the length of the late afternoon football game (i.e., that starts at 4:00 p.m.) being televised by CBS, there might be an opportunity in that 3 hour window to televise a local news program between the end of the late afternoon football game and the beginning of the “Sixty Minutes” program. Often, however, the late afternoon football game, e.g., because of a sudden death overtime situation, takes all or more of the three hours to complete.
When this occurs, CBS continues to broadcast the late afternoon football game. The local CBS affiliate will typically eliminate its local news broadcast. And if the late afternoon football game extends past 7:00 p.m., the local CBS affiliate will typically delay the start time at which it broadcasts the “Sixty Minutes” program.
Unfortunately, there is no way to predict whether the game might run long until the game actually extends into the fourth quarter of the football game at the very earliest. Further, if the game will extend into the sudden death overtime scenario, that can only be determined as of the game's end of regulation time. Accordingly, any changes to the program schedule that ideally would be reflected in the data used to form the electronic program guide occur too close in time to the effected event (e.g., the “Sixty Minutes” program) for those changes to be encoded at the part of the digital television system that sends the data to the viewer's decoding television equipment.
As a result, a user tuning to the CBS television signal is presented with a professional football game that is either very late into its fourth quarter or is in the midst of sudden death overtime. Yet when the viewer accesses the electronic program guide, the viewer is presented with information that indicates either that the local news is currently being broadcast or that the “Sixty Minutes” news program is currently being broadcast.